A few years ago, a television show premiered on the Arts&Entertainment network called “Intervention”. I haven’t seen it in a while, but I guess the show is in its 21st season. The show follows one or two participants who are abusing or severely addicted to drugs or alcohol. Relatives and friends of the addict are interviewed, who detail the effects the addiction has had on the family—the sadness, the grief, the lies that often accompany addiction. And they share their concern for the harm the addict is doing to themselves and the family.
A trained intervention specialist then prepares the family for staging an intervention, in which the family and friends gently confront the addict about their addiction. At the intervention, the addict is given a choice: enter a rehabilitation program or risk losing contact and financial assistance from their relatives. From what I’ve read, the show has had tremendous success in getting help for addicts and their families.
I’ve had some personal experience with intervention: In seminary, I volunteered at a drug and alcohol treatment facility for teenagers, and I would participate in group family counseling sessions, in which parents and relatives would gather, in a very gentle setting. And they would share with their teenager how the addiction has brought harm to the them and the family life.
Most priests are not trained intervention specialists or drug counselors, but for families facing these issues, the Church can help connect your family with those with this expertise.
This method of loving confrontation is biblical. As we heard today, If your brother falls into sin, try to help them, confront them. If they don’t listen to you, bring another with you. A family effort is often needed in helping someone who has fallen into addiction, sin, or unhealthy behavior. Notice, the Lord doesn’t say, embarrass the sinner by bringing up their faults in public. That’s not ever one of the steps, is it? Rather, correction is done in private. Calmly, rationally. Not out of revenge, but concern.
It’s interesting to note that the Lord’s teaching on intervention follows his parable of the lost sheep, in which the Lord speaks of the love his heavenly Father has for those who have strayed into sin and error. Jesus, the Son, is sent by the Father to seek out the lost sheep.
As members of the body of Christ on Earth, the Lord continues this effort of seeking lost sheep through us. One of the ways God seeks out and saves his lost sheep, is through us: through family members who lovingly and gently confront those who struggle with addiction to drugs, gambling, pornography, internet shopping, video games, parents who act as watchmen over their children, as we heard in the prophet Ezekiel today. If a family member stops going to Church, ignores Church teaching, blasphemes in public, we have a duty to gently correct them, especially parents toward their children.
Of course, the point of correcting fellow Christians when they fall into sin isn’t to prove that we are holier than they are. The point is concern for their souls, and helping them to be the people God made them to be.
God loves lost sheep, which is why he sends us out. God loves addicts. Many people I’ve known who have struggled with addiction have great intellectual gifts, have tremendously large hearts. And sometimes they turn to addiction because they feel emotions like grief so deeply they turn to other mind-altering substances to numb their pain. Though they act in unlovable ways, the addict is a child of God, loved by God.
Intervention and fraternal correction aims to help people who sometimes become incapable of helping themselves, who have fallen into a cycle of hurting themselves and their families, who have started making self-destructive choices. Part of being pro-life, is to help people when they are making anti-life decisions, choices that are destructive to their eternal life, their spiritual life, emotional life, physical life, or family life.
In the Reading from Romans today, St. Paul teaches that all the 10 commandments, don’t commit adultery, don’t break the sabbath day, don’t commit murder, don’t steal or covet, can all be summed-up by the command: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Fraternal correction, confronting the sinner, the addict, is done out of love. Parents correcting their children when they act selfishly, gently correcting your spouse when they act selfishly is done out of love. Helping someone to be the person God made them to be, to walk righteously in the Law of the Lord, is an act of love.
It takes a lot of courage, doesn’t it, to confront someone. It’s easier to ignore it, minimize it, or justify it. And to confront someone personally, is hard. It’s easier to go over their heads, or to complain on the internet, even to join a mob and protest and riot. But to calmly and rationally bring your concerns to another. It’s hard.
Not to mention how important it is to ensure that we aren’t just complaining about behavior we don’t like. Engaging you fraternal correction, you better have your facts straight, you better think before you speak, you better be rooted in the truth of the Gospel, thinking not as the world thinks, but with the mind of Christ. You better not be reacting out of a bruised ego, but out of patience and love. That’s hard! This isn’t an easy Gospel.
One of the reasons it is important to take up this difficult task is because we would want someone to help us, if we fell in to sin. It’s easier to fall into some of these sins and addictions that require outside intervention than we’d like to readily admit. But if it was me whose life was on a downward spiral of self-destruction, if it was me choosing a lifestyle contrary to the Gospel, I hope I’d have people in my life who loved me enough to see the truth about my actions or false beliefs.
“Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” That includes openness to being corrected if it is for the good of my soul or my family or the Church. The Christian must always be open to correction, to change, to confronting difficult truths about our own habits or personal choices.
May each of us be humble enough to receive the correction we need to grow in holiness, to help others become the people God made them to be, to live in the freedom of the children of God and receive an everlasting inheritance in heaven for the Glory of God and salvation of souls.
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